


some sad things that i know about you

by jaegermighty



Category: The Flash (TV 2014)
Genre: Character Study, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-02-07
Updated: 2015-02-07
Packaged: 2018-03-10 23:45:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,969
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3307652
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jaegermighty/pseuds/jaegermighty
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>You know those weird chow mein noodle cookie things? Like when you dip them in chocolate and make these little clusters with butterscotch and stuff inside? You take those, and dip them in marshmallow fluff and I swear on my thermocycler, Cisco, you will see the face of God.</p>
            </blockquote>





	some sad things that i know about you

Caitlin took her heels off sometimes at her desk; Cisco only noticed because one afternoon Ronnie came up and surprised them both with Big Belly Burger and she leapt up to give him a hug, laughing in surprise when she looked down at her bare feet and said, “oh, I forgot.” Cisco took the food and grinned at them all the way through lunch, giving them shit about their accidental matching outfits, looking away politely at every kiss—when he could anyway, because they were fast, and too happy to be shy, which Cisco didn’t hold against them. 

She doesn’t really do it anymore, maybe because she doesn’t have a desk anymore so much as an open plan lab with a rotating staff of superheroes in it, but also maybe because Caitlin doesn’t do a lot of that sort of thing anymore—taking off her heels when they start to hurt, or Kit Kat bars from the vending machine in the break room, extra shots of vanilla in her lattes sometimes, when she feels like it. Granted they don’t have a vending machine in the break room anymore, or even a break room at all, seeing as how it blew up, but it’s a symbolic thing, in general. She takes aspirin when her feet hurt, now, is Cisco’s point.

She likes dark chocolate and M&Ms, but only crispy M&Ms, which she was extremely happy to hear were coming back. Ice cream, preferably strawberry flavored, but just plain strawberry isn’t nearly as good as the kind they used to sell at the ice cream shop in her hometown, that was sort of like vanilla soft serve but with strawberry _flavor rings_ —that’s what she called them, “strawberry flavor rings, Cisco, like little piping of flavor around the edges of the swirl—I know! I know! Is your mouth watering, my mouth is watering! I don’t know how they did it.”—but it closed down when she was in twelfth grade and she hasn’t been able to find it anywhere since. Tragic, honestly. 

Dutch letters from this _one specific_ bakery and raspberry muffins but _only_ her grandmother’s recipe and, maybe this is weird, but you know those weird chow mein noodle cookie things? Like when you dip them in chocolate and make these little clusters with butterscotch and stuff inside? You take those, and dip them in marshmallow fluff and _I swear on my thermocycler, Cisco, you will see the face of God._ She brought them to work once, specifically to make him try it and he has to say, she was right. 

He thinks like, maybe he could try and make them? He goes to the grocery store one night, his head still pounding from Hartley’s explosion, and stands in the baking aisle thinking, _where the hell do I find marshmallow fluff? Do they even sell chow mein noodles here? There were peanuts or something in them too, what the fuck._

His head really hurts so he gives up and buys some pistachios instead, the dry-roasted kind, still in the shell, because she thinks they taste weird when they’re naked. He leaves them on her desk the next morning and spends twenty minutes convincing her that no, he didn’t break any of her stuff, and he didn’t build any bombs she’s gonna be pissed about later, either.

"Well, thank you," she says, "of course I can’t eat them in here. This equipment is highly sensitive."

"I eat in here," Cisco says.

"I’m aware of that," Cait replies, pointedly, and Cisco laughs in her face. He catches her sneaking some at her computer an hour later and decides, magnanimously, not to mention it. 

 

 

The thing about people like Barry is that they’re so nice they’re incapable of being subtle; when Barry likes you, he LIKES YOU, he is YOUR FRIEND, he smiles at you constantly and gives you reassuring hugs when you’re sad and says earnest, heartfelt things that make you feel like you’ve just bathed in a hot tub full of sunshine. Barry doesn’t do morally grey, Barry doesn’t hold grudges. Barry Allen is absolutely, no matter what There For You, sometimes late and a little unkempt but always at a hundred and ten percent when he gets there, because he doesn’t know any other way to be. Cisco would die for Barry Allen, he’s pretty sure.

Cait didn’t like him much at first; they went out for drinks the night after they found out what he could do and she said, “he’s naive. Even discounting the risk he poses, should he use his…abilities irresponsibly, just on a personal level, he’s sort of annoying,” which didn’t surprise Cisco at all, because Caitlin is the sort of person who says she dislikes puppies and small children and cat videos on the internet, but smiles at babies on the street and saves the scraps from her plate to feed that stray cat that roams around the fire escape at Cisco’s apartment when she thinks nobody's looking. She doesn’t like things that are too straightforward, or genuine, or emotional—not because she doesn’t like _them_ , but because she doesn’t like her own reaction. It makes her tense, it makes her feel weird; the first time Barry complimented her, walked into the lab and said, absently, “hey Cait, you look nice today,” she went stiff as a board and didn’t look anyone in the eye for the rest of the afternoon. She hasn’t worn that outfit since, either.

Cisco, on the other hand, likes genuine people. He’s pretty genuine himself; he’s been informed that he wears his heart on his sleeve, but it’s only obvious when his heart feels bad, because he’s so happy the rest of the time that nobody notices the difference. Caitlin took a while to warm up to him, too—it’s just her way. Ronnie helped, because Ronnie made her happy, but Ronnie couldn’t make her trust people easily, that’s something hardwired into her bones, the way goodness is hardwired into Barry’s.

She came around eventually, because nobody just _doesn’t come around_ to Barry, but she still flinches sometimes when he’s so directly nice, when he says things sometimes that are so sincere and kindhearted that Cisco can tell, it just makes her so uncomfortable. “I want to be a hero,” Barry told them once, hunched over on the gurney, healing from something or the other, “a real hero. A person that does good, that makes the world better. Just, sometimes, I don’t know if I’m good enough,” and when Cisco looked over at Caitlin, her eyes were closed, and her hands were shaking. 

Caitlin would die for Barry Allen too, he’s pretty sure. He can see how sometimes, it’s a little too much. 

 

 

They kissed once, when they were drunk. Cait spent a lot of time at Cisco’s place after they found out about Barry, and got him moved to the labs—it was closer than hers, and they were always working late, rerunning equations, trying to keep their shit together, and one night they got blasted on some tequila he found in his kitchen and made out for like twenty minutes against the sink. 

She was a good kisser, even wasted, she didn’t make any annoying noises, or try to put her hands in his hair, which he hates. She just held on to his waist, sort of lightly, and after a little bit moved them to his back, really carefully, like she was unsure if she had permission. Her foundation rubbed off onto his cheek and she leaned her weight against the counter and slid down so they were on the same level. Her feet were in-between his; he remembers liking that a lot, for some reason.

It was stupid; they haven’t even talked about it, really. She woke up the next morning and blushed a little when she walked past the kitchen but all she said was, “I hope this doesn’t…” and Cisco said, “no, of course not. Of course not,” and she smiled and cried a little and they hugged and went back to work and it was fine. Whatever, it was a thing. A thing that happens.

He’s not in love or anything, he just thinks about it sometimes. What it’d be like, what a date with her would end up being. She’d probably want to do something sort of traditional, which Cisco would be down for, he likes doing that stuff, he could take her out for coffee, or dinner and a movie. He wouldn’t be all formal about it though; that’d just put her on edge, so he’d be…casual, nonchalant. Talk about normal things until she’s comfortable enough to reach out for his hand, like he can tell she almost does, sometimes, in the lab when things are tense or walking through the parking lot, when it’s dark.

He’s an engineer, he builds things, he knows how they work. He knows how Caitlin works, how her gears turn and her joints fit together. They’d be really good in bed together. He’d wake up early and make her pancakes, and she’d complain that he’s not using the whole wheat flour that she bought, and they’d watch the Today Show and bicker over the headlines. They wouldn’t be like she and Ronnie were, so effusively perfect that it hurt to look at; both of them are a little too banged up now to pull that off. But they’d be good, still, regardless. He knows this because they’re friends, and friends make the best lovers, in his experience.

But anyway. Ronnie was a good guy. Is still a good guy, possibly. He made Caitlin really happy when he was alive, and really devastated when he was dead, and now that he’s sort of in-between Cait really doesn’t know how the fuck to feel, so yeah, those are all facts. So Cisco’s not in love. But he thinks about it sometimes.

 

 

"You have to stir constantly," Caitlin says. She actually has a recipe pulled up on her phone, because she’s actually such a weird, neurotic freak, Cisco honestly doesn’t know what to do with her sometimes, "so the chocolate doesn’t burn. Do we have a better spatula? I’m not confident about this one’s tensile strength."

"We have but one spatula, Dr. Snow," Cisco says, and dumps the entire bag of chocolate chips into the saucepan. "Somehow, we must persevere."

"Stop eating the butterscotch," Cait says, sternly.

"No," Cisco says, grinning with his mouth full.

Caitlin sighs. “At least let _me_ have some then,” and resentfully chomps down on a handful of butterscotch chips, scowling like it’s her last meal before execution. “This would go much smoother with a double boiler.”

"I could probably make a double boiler, but you won’t let me do experiments in your apartment anymore.”

"You melted my place mats!" Cait says indignantly. "I loved those place mats. They looked like bamboo."

"Yeah, the bamboo went boom," Cisco says sadly. "Not my best effort."

"Keep stirring," Caitlin says, and nudges him. "Cisco, it doesn’t say when we should add the cashews."

"Oh God, it doesn’t _say_?" Cisco cries. "Cait, what the hell, what are we gonna _do_ —”

"Shut up,” Caitlin replies, smiling like she’s trying to keep it in, turning her face away quick so he doesn’t see. “This was _your_ idea.”

"I mean, I guess we’ll have to wing it," Cisco says. "It’ll be touch and go. We should say our goodbyes now, probably."

"Goodbye, Cisco," says Cait obligingly. She’s leaning on the counter right next to him; her heels are off. "Nice knowin’ ya."

"It really was," Cisco says sadly. "You know, for you." Caitlin laughs in his face and takes another handful of butterscotch, unprompted.

"Just keep stirring," she says. Yeah, yeah, yeah. He’s on it.


End file.
